It’s a brand new year, and a brand new bunch of items in the latest Previews catalog! Bust out your January 2010 edition, and follow me into…the future…as I take a look at the swell items coming soon to your local comic book store:

p. 26 – Free Comic Book Day 2010 Eco-Friendly Shopping Bags:

Perfect for hauling around your dead-tree funnybooks!

p. 64 – Capsule Assortments Marvel Figurines:

I’m okay with most of these, I suppose, but there’s something hideously wrong with the Thor one in the upper left. I don’t even know what’s going on there. Say, Thor, the giant helmet isn’t helping to hide your macrocephalic head, there.

p. 179 – Marvel Select Cyclops Action Figure:

“Now Mr. Summers, just apply these strawberry compresses for a half-hour every evening before bed, and those unsightly dark circles should begin to fade.”

p. 192 – Twi-Lit #1:

“When the vampires on campus would rather bake in their weed than drink blood, life is pretty mellow. Well, except for the occasional scraps with the werewolves, but as long as they vacuum up afterward, the vamps are cool with it. What’s worse is the furry fan down the hall who’s convinced he’s a werewolf, but isn’t. If the vampires didn’t need him to handle the UV lights for growing their stash (vaporized limbs are a real downer), they’d drain his blood like that…if they weren’t out getting more snack cakes for the munchies.”

Sounds like it hews more closely to traditional vampire legends than the actual Twilight novels.

Also, please note the lit cigarette “L” in the logo. Fantastic.

p. 196 – The Archie Wedding: Will You Marry Me? TPB:

It sorta looks like he’s looking out at the readers and asking them to marry him. “I’m totally done with Veronica and what’s-her-name, the blond one…I’m a’fixin’ to marry you!”

p. 316 – Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter HC:

I think my favorite part is when Spike and Angel are competing for Abe’s love.

p. 316 – The World of Warcraft Guide to Winning at Life SC:

“Step 1: Turn off the World of Warcraft game, go outside.”

p. 326 – Marvel 70th Anniversary Trading Cards:

This is probably just me, but when I come across the art cards drawn by Joe Pekar (as I have just recently processing some of them for the eBay) a small part of my mind keeps telling me they’re by Harvey Pekar, and just the very idea of Harvey Pekar sitting at his dinner table drawing sketch after sketch of Marvel characters amused me.

It doesn’t take much to amuse me, sometimes, I know.

p. 330 – Dark Knight at Heart t-shirt:

“Ma’am…I’m sorry, but I’m afraid the Batman bat emblem is sticking directly into his aorta. We must operate immediately.”

I see the Pop Culture Mixmaster has struck again, randomly slapping together two slightly past their sale date fads into one brand new exciting product!

p. 333- Star Wars Greedo Blueberry t-shirt:

On the other hand, speaking of “past the sale date,” this Greedo shirt has a charming simplicity to it. I can’t remember ever seeing just a plain ol’ Greedo shirt before. At long last, the Greedo fan base is being catered to.

p. 342 – The Smurfs Quick-Stepping Smurf Figure:

“Get down and funky with the grooviest Smurf ever – Quick-Steppin’ Smurf! He’s down with the lingo, he’s got all the moves, and he’ll smurf up the dance floor like no other Smurf!”

Okay, first…whose grandpa wrote that solicitation copy? And second, I’m assuming there’s a sound chip involved somewhere, which has me hoping there’s an option to have the Smurf sing the “la la lalala la la lala” bit from the cartoons. A whole room of these singing that Smurf refrain could quite possibly be the creepiest thing ever.

p. 346 – Obama 8-inch Plush:

I don’t know, man…just sayin’.

p. 346 – Sleepy Joe the Egg:

That’s almost like the barest minimum you’d require to make a brand new copyrightable character. I actually kind of admire that. “And here’s our other new character, ‘Finger Line Drawn in Sand!'”

Frankly, there’s not enough Night of the Living Mickey merchandise out there.

p. 372 – Wolverine & The X-Men Wolverine 1/2-Scale Bust:

NOTE: Not a sex toy.

p. 380 – KISS Commemorative Knives:

Some of you may remember this story I told way back when about my inadvertent offending of a KISS fan. Here’s how the story may have played out had KISS knives been available at the time:

…A customer brings up the newest issue of the “KISS” comic book and started talking to me about how great it is that there’s all this new KISS stuff coming out. I replied, absolutely without any malice, that it was very interesting that a band that was once big and popular could fade away for several years then come back so strongly.

The customer then got very angry with me, shook his finger at me and proclaimed “KISS NEVER FADED AWAY! THEY WERE ALWAYS POPULAR!” (STAB STAB STAB)

p. 381 – Personality Pose Pooh Figurine:

I could have gone my whole life without seeing Winnie-the-Pooh in paisley underpants.

THESE UNDERPANTSARE FILLED WITH POOH

I mean, those are underpants, right? Otherwise Winnie-the-Pooh is smearing his nether regions with honey and oh God my childhood is ruined.

Also, they might have been more careful about hyphenating the word “figurines.”

p. 385 – Giant Inflatable D20:

NOTE: Not a sex t…well, then again….

p. 391 – Cthulhu Dice:

I’m pretty sure this is exactly what H.P. Lovecraft hoped would result from his writings.

Marvel Previews p. 62 – Breaking into Comics the Marvel Way #1 & #2:

(Video not safe for work. Or maturity.)

Marvel Previews p. 108 – Avengers The Contest Premiere HC:

Oh, c’mon. I know there’s other stuff in it, but if you’re going to put out a hardcover edition of the Marvel Super-Hero Contest of Champions mini-series, an epic classic of incredibly dopey superhero comics, at least respect it enough to put the full name on the cover. I mean, honestly.

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